


It's no good unless it grows

by allredpen



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment
Genre: Boners exist, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Napping, Sharing a Bed, Unsafe driving, d/s elements were not intentional, mentions of car accidents that do not eventuate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23574301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allredpen/pseuds/allredpen
Summary: “I mean, you’re the one who told Sean we’d be taking a nap together.”God, his heart was hammering in his chest, and he ached to roll over, away from Shane’s scrutiny, away from that physical presence looming tall over his own bed.Shane laughed softly, but he had inched forward, his knees bent and resting on the edge of the mattress.“Did I?” He asked, leaning forward to place his palms on the mattress. “I guess I did. Would you believe me if I told you it was the pie madness talking?”-In which Shane leads a horse to water, but Ryan makes it drink.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 64
Kudos: 548





	It's no good unless it grows

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this around when the pie ep of Weird and/or Wonderful World came out but I am a snail.  
> I am not new to fic writing, but it has been approximately 15 years since I published my last Yu-Gi-Oh! Het on ff.net, and much has changed
> 
> Title is from Take Care, by Beach House.

Ryan wondered what his epitaph would be if he fell asleep at the wheel and careened into the embankments of The 101 right now. 

‘Here lies Ryan Bergara, who ate himself to death.’

Or

‘Ryan Bergara. More pie than man.’

Or

‘He died as he lived—an assortment of organs.’

He might need to workshop those. 

The road hummed steadily under the wheels of Ryan’s car as he barreled along the freeway, and he could feel himself zoning out, eyes fixed on the horizon, overhead signs whipping past unseen. 

Shane—oblivious to his own peril—was twisted around in the front seat, chin resting on his hand, speaking softly to Matt Real who had cheerfully squeezed himself into the back of the Prius with gear from the day’s shoot.

Ryan couldn’t make out what they were talking about, only Shane’s soft lilting laugh breached the noise from the road. Just the sound of Shane’s voice reaching his ears and breaking like a wave, washing over his brain, too exhausted for it to penetrate. 

In any other circumstance, the quietude might have been nice, but today Ryan was desperately concentrating on not obliterating himself and his passengers. He squinted at the cars ahead of him and tightened his shaking hands on the steering wheel. 10-and-2. 

Every few minutes, Shane would glance over at him. Ryan could feel the gaze lingering on the side of his face like a physical touch, but he ignored it. He blinked against the sting and blur in his eyes. 

Ryan knew he was being quiet, reserved in the same way he got after a particularly harrowing Supernatural shoot. They’d been eating _pie_ for God’s sake—not a ghost in sight—but still he felt as drained as if he’d run a marathon while doing algebra. All he wanted, _all he wanted_ was to lay down, close his eyes, and just sleep.

When he finally merged off the freeway, onto the smaller streets of Matt’s neighbourhood, Ryan felt relief and dread mixed in equal quantities; one less body in his car and a quick reprieve from driving, yes, but _God_ how was he just one third of the way through this trip?

Ryan pulled his car into Matty’s street, coasted to a stop outside his building, and let his eyes close for just a moment, half-listening to Shane’s critical appraisal of yet another cool indie band with a dumb name. It was almost impressive that Shane could work up this much enthusiasm; Ryan had been stuck on monosyllabic grunts since practically the moment he ate his last mouthful of pie. 

Shane hauled himself out of the front seat to help Matty shift the gear. Ryan stayed where he was, hunched in on himself, eyes squeezed shut and head throbbing. 

“Need any help?” He called faintly to whoever was rummaging in the back seat, and receiving only a snort in reply. 

He pressed his temple to the cold glass of the window and let himself wallow in his fatigue.

Ryan would be the first to admit that he was prone to overeating at the best of times. That, conspiring with his rabid competitive nature meant he had consumed pie to the point of nausea today.

Was he spurred on even more by the frisson he felt when he made Shane reel back in shocked delight? It was hard for Ryan to deny that the outrageous things he did in Shane’s company were at least in part so that he could look up and catch Shane’s eyes widening in alarm, or crinkling with laughter. 

So, he had eaten himself sick and he had no one to blame for the resulting sugar-crash but himself. He’d been giddy with the energy today, the addictive joy of getting to perform the peculiarities of his friendship with Shane in front of a captive audience. Ryan knew they were obnoxious, but the owner—Sean—had been a good sport about the whole thing, watching them, making arch comments, playing the straight man for them. 

And Shane—Shane as always seemed to absorb Ryan’s energy and double it, delighted in Ryan’s outrageousness and excess, never failed to 'yes-and' for him, indulge him, one-up him. 

Ryan allowed himself to wonder, not for the first time, how far that indulgence would stretch. 

He turned that thought over in his head, examined it behind his closed eyelids until the sound of the car door shattered his reverie. He opened his eyes just as Shane was settling back into the passenger seat, and reaching a long arm across the centre console to pat Ryan twice on the chest. 

“Come on, now. Nearly there.” Shane said, his palm remaining for a moment, solid on Ryan’s chest, and he smiled at Ryan with his eyes creased at the corners, and Ryan let a breath out, resisting the urge to seize Shane’s wrist and trap his hand high on his pec where it was warm and grounding and real. 

He let the hand and the warmth it brought recede back to the distant passenger seat. Ryan hoped the helpless sensation that he had failed to connect the dots somewhere would go with it. 

“Just one more leg on this journey, pal.” Shane said softly as Ryan swung his car back out into traffic.

“Maybe for you,” Ryan replied flatly. “Two legs for the driver.”

Shane cocked his head and leveled a look at Ryan that he was incapable of deciphering. Incapable, and unwilling. It was too much, too much to feel everything he was feeling and parse the energy that crackled in the space between the driver and passenger seats in this moment. 

Ryan made the remainder of the trip to Shane’s house with a hand planted on his own thigh, pinching himself hard when his vision blurred, shaking his head minutely when his eyelids drooped, drawing concerned glances from Shane. Maybe he’d take a power-nap in Shane’s street before continuing home. Maybe he’d just veer off— 

“-Ryan?” 

“Hm?” Ryan’s awareness returned just in time for him to realize that Shane had been speaking. When he glanced at Shane, he found an exasperated look, maybe tinged with fondness, or maybe he was reading into it. 

“I said, I feel good about today. I think we did good.”

“We did.” Ryan didn’t have to think about it. It was rare to feel so sure about a video right after he’d shot it, but Ryan knew this was a good one. He just felt it. 

He chanced another glance at Shane, and found him with an elbow propped onto the passenger window, smiling into his hand. 

“Yeah, we did.”

Something like sentiment welled up in Ryan’s throat. He swallowed against it and blamed the fatigue. 

* * *

Ryan was pulling haphazardly into Shane’s driveway too soon, with concerningly little memory of the preceding ten minutes. He yanked the parking brake and dropped his head onto the steering wheel, car still in drive.

“Alright, man.” Ryan muttered, flapping a hand toward Shane in the approximation of a wave. 

There was no telltale thud of the car door closing.

“Ryan?” 

Ryan lifted his head. “Shane?”

Shane, legs halfway out the door, shot Ryan a look. 

“You gonna park up?”

“Huh?” Ryan stared, open-mouthed, at the blurry mass hovering around his car door frame. 

“Park? The car?” Shane snapped his fingers in front of Ryan’s eyes. “Jesus, Ryan. You drove us here”

“Uh-” Ryan felt like he was 10 minutes behind Shane, at the bottom of a steep hill. Why was he parking, now? He needed the car to get home. Did Shane know he needed the car to get home?

“Come on, Ry.” With that, Shane was walking around the car, opening the driver’s door, reaching to release Ryan’s seat belt. Ryan wasn’t a particularly proud person at the best of times, which was lucky, because he was pretty sure he was being coddled. 

Shane stood for a moment at Ryan’s door, leaning down to peer into his face. Ryan squinted back at him. 

“Alright,” Shane thumped the roof of Ryan’s car twice with the palm of his broad hand, making Ryan flinch. “Out. Out you get. You’re going upstairs. I’ll park for you.” 

“Watch the paint job.” Ryan muttered, but his tone belied the relief that coursed through him as he stepped out. 

“You take these, I’ll put your beloved Prius ‘round back.” Shane said as he fished his own apartment keys from his pocket and folded himself into Ryan’s car. Ryan plucked the keys from Shane’s outstretched hand and wandered off to let himself inside.

* * *

The entry to Shane’s apartment was another planet as Ryan stood there, swaying in his socks. The stucco ceiling seemed to swirl and swell, and the ground up to meet it. The living room that lay beyond the hall was bathed in dappled sunlight and tilting. 

Tilting? 

A firm hand gripped his elbow then, righting Ryan before he even realized he’d been listing to the left.

“Buddy!” Shane huffed a laugh and let the front door close behind him. “You might actually hurt yourself.”

“M’fine,” Ryan replied. He steeled himself against the urge to curl up right there in the entry hall and doze off. Shane slung a long arm across Ryan’s shoulders.

“If you fall and crack your head open because you’re _pie drunk_ I refuse to drive you to hospital.”

“Mm but it’s your fault. Tilty rooms.”

Shane laughed again, drawing Ryan’s own arm to lay around his narrow waist, and walked him down the hall as if they were three sheets to the wind. It was reminiscent, to Ryan, of all the times he really had been walked drunkenly through this apartment.

Usually Ryan was left on the couch to suffer through Obi’s dander and then a hangover in turn. This time, when Ryan paused at the entry to the lounge, he was tugged past it.

“Come on, you big baby,” Shane said. “I’m putting you down for a nap. Sleep off those carbs. Do you want to borrow some sweats?”

Ryan’s traitorous head bobbed in the affirmative. 

Before he knew it, Ryan was being steered to the bathroom door and shoved gently through it with a: “Fresh toothbrush in the bottom drawer. Floss in the caddy there.”

“I’m not _actually_ a baby, you know.” Ryan called belatedly to Shane’s retreating back. Too little, too late. Already, he felt himself relaxing, leaning into the feeling of being looked after. 

Shane’s soft knock on the door came a little later, while Ryan was standing with the toothbrush hanging from his mouth, and his shirt hanging from his hand. Why had he taken his shirt off? Deodorant? Ryan shook his head, trying to clear the fog and the persistent ringing in his ears. 

“Sweats on the bed for you.” Shane called.

Ryan’s pulse jumped, and he examined himself in the mirror, praying it wasn’t as obvious as it felt.

“Ryan?” Another tap on the door, louder now. “If you’ve fallen asleep in there I will seriously never let you live it down.”

He was so exhausted he couldn’t decide whether to finish brushing his teeth or put on his shirt, and Shane was tapping insistently on the door like he thought Ryan had taken a nose-dive into the tile, so he just swung the door open as he was.

Ryan knew how ridiculous he must have looked, standing shirtless in Shane’s bathroom with toothpaste foam dripping down his chin. Shane just stared at him, brow furrowed, his gaze tripping down to Ryan’s bare chest, where it lingered for a moment. 

“Are you, uh- are you actually okay?” 

Ryan shrugged. He was teetering on the spot, and with every blink his body seemed to threaten the total shutdown of his brain. 

This was how he found himself being manhandled by Shane Madej for the umpteenth time that day, grasped at the bicep and plonked down on the closed toilet seat. 

“Finish brushing, Ryan.” He said, picking up his own toothbrush. Ryan looked up at him, took in the soft sleep pants, the grey Henley with sleeves rolled up to expose long pale forearms dusted with fine dark hair. He had his clear-framed glasses on, and his hair had fallen out of what little styling it had from the shoot. 

Tired as he was, Ryan found a mole he’d never noticed before, just below Shane’s elbow ditch, and he fixed his blurry eyes on it while he ineffectually dragged the toothbrush across his molars. 

“I put some sweatpants on the bed.” Shane said, and turned the tap off. 

“You said. Thanks.” Ryan got up to spit. As he leaned over the sink—one elbow propped on the vanity for stability—he felt a steadying hand on his lower back. He rinsed his mouth and stood up straight to watch Shane in the mirror. 

“Bed’s all ready for you.” Shane said, looking resolutely at himself in the mirror, avoiding Ryan’s eye.

Ryan felt like his brain was flipping around in his skull trying to keep up with whatever was going on. 

Shane dropped the hand from his back, and Ryan suppressed a shiver. 

* * *

Ryan had no idea how he got to Shane’s bedroom, but at least he wasn’t driving now. He found himself changed into Shane’s sweatpants, t-shirt ditched for good, crumpled somewhere on Shane’s floor. Crawling under the sheets, he settled on the left side, belatedly remembering that the left was Shane’s side just as Shane himself re-entered the room and set a glass of water on the nightstand.

He paused there, next to his own bed, arms crossed over his chest, looking down at Ryan.

Ryan let himself look back, look properly; Shane’s eyes were as amused and fond as always, but deep bags hung there too, bruised a pinkish-purple against Shane’s pale skin. Paler skin than usual, Ryan thought, and hair more disheveled. Pale, but for where he reddened across the bridge of his nose the longer Ryan searched his face. Ryan, too, was fighting a flush that crept up his neck. 

Acting on impulse and giving himself no time at all to talk himself out of it, Ryan yanked the covers back and shuffled to create a Shane-sized space in the bed. 

“You look pretty tired, dude.” 

Shane’s eyebrows rocketed toward his hairline, and his eyes trailed down to Ryan’s exposed chest once more, before darting away. Ryan held his ground, sheet still aloft, tried to suppress the urge to cover himself.

“Ehh, yeah,” Shane scratched the back of his neck, eyes fixed on the wall over Ryan’s shoulder. “I feel like I could read a book on the couch and maybe drift off…”

Ryan could have taken that. Shane was clearly offering him an out, and maybe he _should_ have taken it. Maybe if he had an ounce of self-preservation. Maybe if he wasn’t the kind of person who touched every surface, picked up every stone, opened every door. 

He caught Shane’s eye again and took a breath.

“I mean, you’re the one who told Sean we’d be taking a nap together.” 

God _,_ his heart was hammering in his chest, and he ached to roll over, away from Shane’s scrutiny, away from that physical presence looming tall over his own bed. 

Shane laughed softly, but he had inched forward, his knees bent and resting on the edge of the bed. No averted eyes now. 

“Did I?” He asked, leaning forward to place his palms on the mattress. “I guess I did. Would you believe me if I told you it was the pie madness talking?”

“If you wanted me to believe that, I could.” 

Shane hummed, noncommittal, and—like it was nothing at all—he was slipping into the bed alongside Ryan, pulling the covers over himself, taking off his glasses.

And Ryan? Ryan was racking up additions to a long list of things he had done today that were ill-advised. He could have rolled over, falling asleep in the way they had done many times before on shoots. Falling asleep back-to-back with a couple of feet of empty bed between them was nothing new.

Yet, here, exhausted, split open, Ryan could admit to himself that it felt better than he could have imagined to just stay on his side facing Shane, watching as he fiddled with his phone, setting an alarm and plugging it in to charge. He was too tired to feel self-conscious about the way he stared at the side of Shane’s face; the long line of Shane’s nose, the fine points of his eyebrows, the _idiotic_ mustache that Ryan would never concede to being fond of. 

He lost himself for a moment, considering that unusual face as a whole, so intimately familiar to Ryan after hours of staring at it in person and in Adobe Premiere.

Now, finally, he could feel himself losing his grip on consciousness. Allowing his eyes to slide shut, flooding his system with pure relief. It felt so good to relinquish his mind to sleep, to feel the faint heat radiating from Shane next to him. Distantly, he felt the mattress shift, as Shane rolled to face him, knees knocking against his. A huffed breath skimmed across his face. Wave after wave of warmth rolled over him, flowing from the places where his body touched Shane’s. In the interests of chasing that feeling, Ryan reached blindly with tingling fingers to curl a hand around Shane’s shoulder. 

One final thought ricocheted around the walls of his skull as Ryan succumbed, that he wanted this, always. He wanted this. Always. 

Just like that—with his body singing its satisfaction and heat seeping into him at every point of contact—Ryan fell asleep. 

* * *

Ryan dreamed of sliding down warm sand dunes on his stomach, he dreamed of roiling waters. A hand on his bicep and a voice whispering urgently to jump, swim. 

* * *

Not all naps are created equal, Ryan knew this. For every nap that left him feeling refreshed were two that had him dry-mouthed, groggy, recovering over a coffee for an hour.

Not so this nap. When Ryan awoke from this nap, he was rested. He felt _energized._

Ryan’s awareness returned to him in a flood and a dozen sensations competed for his attention at once. He became aware of the heat first, the solid warmth from where—Oh—He was laying flush to Shane’s chest. Ryan’s mouth was open on Shane’s neck, and their legs were tangled intimately. His hands were most scandalous of all, one fisted high on Shane’s shirt, while the other had worked its way under the shirt to lay on the bare skin of Shane’s hip. 

Ryan examined himself, looking for the spiral of humiliation, the turmoil that should have consumed him by now.

Nothing. 

Well—not nothing. He had two key realizations:

Firstly, Ryan felt _amazing._ He was tucked into Shane’s arms, curled up to his torso, bracketed by long arms and broad shoulders. Where his face was shoved into Shane’s neck, he could smell the way his body wash had yielded to the warm and faintly musky smell of his skin and his hair where it curled too long at his nape and ears. Ryan could drag his face a few inches to the right and he knew he would find Shane’s mouth, he could feel the breath that left that mouth and tickled the top of his ear. Ryan’s skin was buzzing with the contact. His heart threatened to pound right out of his chest. 

Secondly, Ryan was achingly, desperately hard in his borrowed sweatpants. He almost wanted to convince himself that he was mortified, except he could also feel that Shane was hard, poking Ryan in the lower abdomen, hips twitching sporadically, generating a sharp jolt in Ryan’s stomach with each shift. 

Over the space of a few short minutes of wakefulness, Ryan had gone from a vague theory that crouched timidly in the back of his mind, to an incandescent _need_ for this exact feeling to remain for as long as he could keep it. He laid still, not even daring to move his head, breathing carefully, allowing the scent of Shane’s skin to fill his nose until that essence occupied every square inch of Ryan’s awareness. 

When he felt Shane rouse, it happened slowly. He was rubbing his nose unconsciously into Ryan’s hair, his hips still making minute movements that told Ryan more than he’d ever hoped to know about his friend. 

Shane stretched his legs out, tightened his arms around Ryan’s back then froze, and Ryan knew then that this could go one of two ways. Two paths lay ahead, and he was not satisfied to settle for the one that left him bereft of this feeling; Shane’s forearm flexing where it lay along his shoulder blades, Shane’s thighs pressed along his own. 

Herein lay the challenge. If this were Shane and Ryan three years ago, he knew they would huff apologies, each avoid the other’s eye for a day or two, and set another microscopic boundary in their friendship. Maybe they would silently make a rule to leave a little more space, to unhitch themselves from one another, just slightly. Ryan would try and laugh it off, maybe bring it up as an inside joke once the sting of shame wore off, and try really hard not to think about it every time he caught a glimpse of the pale skin under Shane’s shirt. 

Perhaps that was the easy option. Ryan knew Shane would take it as the path of least resistance, wouldn’t push it, would take Ryan’s lead on this, as ever. 

Ryan, now, emboldened like he’d never been before, wasn’t sure he could live with that. 

Hips tipped carefully away from Shane’s _unrelentingly_ present erection—to give him a little modesty—Ryan let his hand trail to rest on Shane’s forearm, took a breath, and pulled back to look at him.

The sun had sunk low in the sky by now—It had to be 4 pm—and the beams breaking through Shane’s curtains bathed him in a golden light. Ryan was grateful to have his eyes open before Shane so could take in the entirety of this familiar visage. Knowing what Ryan knew about the intricacies of that strange face, he knew that Shane was in fact awake and likely trying to figure out what to do about this situation while his eyes were still closed. Furrowed brows, and the fact that he was holding his breath gave him away instantly to Ryan. 

Ryan could practically hear the gears turning, could imagine all the ways in which Shane was planning his extrication, his explanation, how he would inevitably intellectualize this, as everything else. 

Impulsively, Ryan reached up with his free hand and flicked Shane, hard, right between the eyes.

Shane’s eyes snapped open in shock, then, and Ryan was delighted to find blown-out pupils set in light brown eyes, made amber by the late sun. 

“What the _fuck,_ Ryan?” Shane spluttered, voice sleep-rough and eyebrows raised to roughly the height of the troposphere. 

It was so comical to Ryan that he immediately broke into honking peels of laughter, one hand still resting on Shane’s arm, the other clapped over his own mouth. 

Shane looked somewhere between mortified and murderous, rubbing his hand over the red spot between his eyebrows. 

_God_ , Ryan thought. He’d been so stupid. He hadn’t really seen it until now. The vague crush he’d harbored for as long as they’d been friends was a spectre, but this? Being so close to Shane—close enough to watch his eyes cross as they struggled to focus on Ryan—gave him clarity like he’d never experienced. 

Ryan tightened his grip on Shane’s arm, and flung a leg out to hook over Shane’s leg, keeping him where he was, bringing their hips back together. 

That was definitely giving the game away, if the ever-deepening flush on Shane’s face was any indication. 

That bewildered, flushed expression had Ryan dissolving into laughter again. The whole thing was too funny, too ridiculous. 

“Ryan, I think you’re gonna have to loop me in on the joke, pal,” Said Shane, “Or let me go so I can call a-a-, fucken’ doctor.”

Now Ryan was howling, because Shane was right. He must look insane to Shane in this moment; half draped over him with a hard-on, laughing so hysterically that a tear was running down his temple into his hairline. 

Shane blinked at him, tested Ryan’s grip on his arm. “A doctor or an exorcist.”

“Ah! No,” Ryan wheezed, bringing up his other hand to hold Shane’s arm in place. “No, no I’m sorry I just- your face-” 

“My face _what_? Ryan, I want you to know you’re being particularly weird right now.” 

Shane wrenched himself away with that, rolling onto his back. Ryan pulled his leg back, letting Shane go. His laughter petered out and he could feel his confident reading of the situation dissipating with the loss of physical contact, and he also really didn’t want to be the guy with a boner flinging his leg over an unwilling friend. 

Ryan frowned. “I dunno, man. I was looking at your face and I guess I could see you talking yourself out of… something.”

He rolled onto his back too. Ryan knew that it was now or never. He had to commit to being the overly-candid one right now, or risk losing the sensation of pure light he had felt while laying tucked into Shane. That light that was already receding, and Ryan was desperate to chase it.

“I know what you’re like, and I know you were lying there trying to figure out how to escape without waking me up-”

“Fairly presumptuous to think you know my actual inner thoughts-”

Ryan clapped a hand over Shane’s mouth without looking at him. “Okay, no. Shut up, dude.” 

Ryan felt teeth under his palm, but Ryan was too afraid to check if it was a smile or if he was about to get bitten. He fixed his gaze to the ceiling. 

“Secondly, I _know_ you. You might not love that, but I do. You talk a big game, you’re never scared of anything normal, but you always find a way to wriggle out of the things that really freak you out-”

Ryan did let himself look over at Shane, now, head turned to meet his gaze. _Here goes._

“-And I know everyone always says I’m the brave one, so, okay. This is me, being brave.” 

He exhaled slowly against the pounding of his heart. This wasn’t ghosts, it wasn’t demons, it wasn’t starting a new company. 

_This is nothing_ , he told himself. The hairs on his arms stood on end and called him a liar; this was everything. 

“I’ve known since I got inside your apartment today that laying down to take a nap with you was basically going to ruin me-” 

With his hand still over the lower half of Shane’s face, Ryan could feel the hitch of Shane’s breath, and the way his skin warmed brilliantly under his palm. Ryan resisted the compulsion to look away from the eye contact, punishingly intimate at this distance.

“-But when I woke up just now, I realized I was wrong. It didn’t ruin me at all, I felt like I was...I dunno, it felt so right. I woke up and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t let myself have that until now”

“I know that if I let go of you right now, if I had let you get up and leave this room without saying anything, that this would just be another thing on the list of things we do and then don’t really talk about.”

Ryan took a deep, shuddering breath.

“You have to know that option is still open to you. If you want this to just be another weird moment in our already extremely weird friendship, I can support that. 

I’ll just head home, and- I don’t know. I’ll head home and I’ll just pretend I definitely did not just lay it all out for you. But if not, well, maybe you’re feeling brave too and maybe you woke up feeling as good about it as I did.”

He slid his hand from Shane’s face, allowing himself to relish in the spark of Shane’s stubble roughing his palm on the way down. He felt sick, but he felt light. 

_I did the thing_ , he thought.

Shane grasped Ryan’s wrist before it could vacate his personal space and cleared his throat.

“You’re finished, then?” He asked, holding Ryan’s wrist aloft over his chest. “You all done with that soliloquy, Hamlet?”

Ryan frowned, first at Shane’s amused expression, then at where Shane was moving Ryan’s captive hand to lay high on his rib cage. 

Shane’s face may have been amused—with a quirked eyebrow and twisted smile—but where he’d laid Ryan’s hand, under a layer of cotton, and skin, and bone, and muscle, Shane’s heart was thumping hard. He was giving himself away.

Shane scooted closer, and without hesitation he sunk his other hand into Ryan’s hair. Blunt fingernails scraped along his scalp, and Ryan was powerless to stop the sound that left his mouth. He would call it a gasp, though he was sure it classified as more of a breathy moan.

His face had surely never glowed hotter than this, as the fingers of Shane’s right hand traversed his scalp to lay at rest on his nape. 

“That was really fucking dramatic Ryan.” He said, while his thumb rubbed circles in the fine hairs at the back of Ryan’s neck. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, the dramatics. Very on-brand.” 

Shane’s heart beat ever faster under Ryan’s hand. “It was kind of confusing though, that whole thing, because not once did you tell me what you were after.” 

His hand stilled. “All of that, but I still have no idea what you need from me. What you _want.”_

“I don’t know what I want. No- wait. I do.” 

Ryan dipped his chin down to where their chests were once again pressed together. “I want... this.”

“Just this?”

“No. I want _at least_ this,” Ryan hooked his ankle back over Shane’s, his bare foot brushing Shane’s sock-clad one. “Right now, I wanna eat some food, and I kind of want to watch a dumb movie, but then I want- If you’ll let me, I want to wake up like this tomorrow.”

Shane’s eyes closed for a moment, and his face bloomed with an easy smile. 

Ryan felt himself drawing even closer. He was so close that he was breathing Shane’s breath, and he could pick out the three grays buried in his facial hair. _I can’t believe I’m about to kiss that dumb fucking mustache,_ He thought 

Time held, suspended, and Ryan was still marveling at his own chutzpah when suddenly Shane was the one laughing. Snorting at first, which dissolved into howling. Ryan furrowed his brow as the tension in the room disintegrated completely. 

  
“Wait, wait. Go back. Did you just-” Shane gasped through his laughter. “Ryan, did you just say you wanted to _eat food?”_

Ryan pulled his arms away to cross them defensively over his chest. 

“I’m hungry again. It’s been hours.” 

Shane was shaking with silent laughter, a hand clutching at his chest. 

“We ate seven pies today, buddy.” 

Ryan’s cheeks burned, peeved even as he swallowed a grin.

“We ate _part_ of seven _slices_ of pie, Shane.”

Feeling as if the opportunity might have escaped him, Ryan made to roll away and off the bed, but was stopped dead by Shane’s forearm, pinning him at the chest with surprising force. If his cheeks had been burning before, well—

“Ah- no way,” Shane said, his voice low, tugging Ryan’s shoulder gently, easing him back to lay flush against Shane. He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry I laughed at you, but in my defense you’re completely ridiculous. I mean, hungry _?_ ”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “I’m a growing boy.”

“Don’t have to tell me that,” Shane said, twitching an eyebrow. “But you were in the middle of something, Ryan, and I was thinking maybe you should finish the thought-”

Ryan surged forward then, before he could change his mind, before Shane could back out, before either of them could get distracted again. He brought his hands up to clasp Shane’s face and pressed their lips together, clumsily.

Ryan felt Shane’s surprised huff inside his own mouth, and the way Shane’s mouth was stretching into a smile. That set Ryan off grinning, and he pulled back as their teeth clinked together.

“Dude.” He took in Shane’s appearance, hair tousled and skin pink around the cheeks and lips. 

“Dude.” Shane replied, and brought his lips to Ryan’s again. They went cautiously at first, softly, careful of teeth and noses, just touching their lips together in the late afternoon sun where it leaked through the curtains. 

Ryan knew now that they had both been keeping this feeling, this urge, hidden; locked in a box and bound with ropes. With every second that passed, he felt those ropes strain and snap. By the time Shane parted his mouth and slid his tongue gently along Ryan’s, the box had been blown wide open, and Ryan thought if he could look at himself right now, he would see beams of light bursting from his very pores. 

They kissed until all humor was long gone, and Ryan moved his arm to Shane’s back to haul him even closer, to roll Shane on top of himself, looping a leg around Shane’s thigh. _God_ he thought he’d been hard before, but it had nothing on this, pressed at every possible point against Shane’s body, burning feverish. 

Shane stilled and pulled back from Ryan’s desperate mouth to touch their foreheads together. His hair was beyond a mess, and from this distance Ryan could see how his flush started on the bridge of his nose and crept outward, claiming the land under the light freckles that dusted his cheekbones. 

“Not that I’m not having the best possible time,” Shane said, voice hoarse. “But if we don’t get up _right now_ , we’re not going anywhere for a long while, and-”

“I promise I don’t care.” Ryan interrupted, arching up to try and claim Shane’s reddened mouth again.

“ _-And_ ,” Shane brought his hands up to fist in Ryan’s hair, dragged Ryan’s head back to expose his jaw and set his mouth on the pulse point there. “And you promised me a dumb movie.” 

“Sure.” Ryan was disinterested in everything that wasn’t Shane’s burning mouth on his neck, and Shane’s dick pressed along his own through endless layers of soft material. 

“-And,” Shane pushed away, sat back, straddled Ryan’s thighs. “I really hate to say it but I’m actually pretty hungry.”

Ryan pressed his hands into his face. He would be screaming if he wasn’t so busy laughing.

* * *

Ryan had to admit things were working out remarkably well, as he struggled to dish pad Thai into two bowls while Shane used teeth and tongue to get the lay of the land on his neck and shoulder. 

God, was he really allowed this? Takeout and Necronomicon queued up on the TV, and Shane fucking Madej, with a broad hand spread on his stomach, grinding him into the kitchen bench, murmuring distractingly in his ear—

If this was his life now? Ryan would never ask for anything again. 


End file.
